


It's Always Been For You

by dornessiti



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BOOKER IS AN ALCOHOLIC AND HE NEEDS A THERAPIST, Depression, F/M, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Not Really Character Death, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Slow Burn, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED, Touch-Starved, like sloooooow, major character death warning only because of normal old guard reasons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:28:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25738069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dornessiti/pseuds/dornessiti
Summary: Quhyn never gets to Booker.Instead, he has a long road to recovery, and the reminder that he isn't as alone as he thinks.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 44
Kudos: 251





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be kind of triggering with the level of alcoholism just because they're immortal and Booker has depression not gonna lie, BUT IT'll BE OKAY I PROMISE

Sebastien Le Livre is drunk. 

It isn’t easy to stay that way, not with this fucking healing leaching the poison from his body, but he’s managing pretty well so far. Perhaps he’ll even die from it if he’s lucky. Half a dozen empty bottles litter the cold sand around him as proof of his efforts, and if he could open his eyes without the world spinning he might have noticed the figure quietly making their way across the beach towards him, but instead, his eyes stay closed and he focuses only on the crashing of the waves and trying not to throw up. 

Booker has been living as a relative hermit off the coast of Côtes d'Armor for the past year since the incident with Copley, taking up residence in a small cottage he bought years ago that he’d let go to ruin. Thankfully, it still functioned well enough by the time he came back that he’s gotten away with as little renovation as possible. Instead, he spends most of his time wallowing. 

The last time he’d been here, Andy had come too, staying with him for a whole six months before heading out to Sicily- or at least he thinks it was Sicily. It’s hard to keep the places straight anymore, not with so many memories begging to run together. It’s easier to forget, less painful.

The figure lays down beside him. 

Booker turns his head, even though it makes his stomach flip, and he takes in every moonlit detail of her face. She could almost be an angel in this light. Nile’s eyes are large and dark, and her hair curls around her head like a crown of braided onyx- an angel, a queen, a ghost of another memory waiting to slip away. 

“Are you real, ma chérie?” He whispers. 

The look she gives him is heavy, and she pauses for a beat before replying. “What are you _doing,_ Booker?”

“Trying to die.” 

“Yeah? And how’s that working out for you?” Nile asks, sarcasm lacing every word. 

“Eh- I’m close now, I think.” Booker lifts the mostly empty bottle still clutched in his fist to his lips, spilling half of it as he does, and finishes off the rest in one go. 

“Alcohol poisoning? Really? I thought you were better than that.” She says.

He shrugs. “Then you thought wrong.” 

Niles gives him another hard look before giving up and sighing, scooching closer to tuck her head against the crook of his neck. Booker’s eyes flutter open in surprise, but he’s missed the company of other people too much to move her. 

Or perhaps he’s simply a lazy drunk.

But the lie leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He knows that most people aren’t supposed to crave touch like they’re starving for it. Most people don’t feel every passing brush of the shoulders, handshakes from strangers, thoughtless hugs, as searing as the sun itself brushing against your skin. Things that he doesn’t deserve, things as simple as laying beside a friend, are things that he wants more than he can dare hope for. But he closes his eyes anyway and selfishly lets himself enjoy that sun-warmth feeling of another person for a while. 

He’s almost asleep when he has a sudden, upsetting thought, “The others left you alone?” 

Nile slaps his arm playfully. “I am an _adult,_ remember? Besides, Andy wanted to travel. She said she wants to see what it’s like to see the world as a mortal. And Yusuf and Nicolo are back in Malta now and we both know that I don’t want to be tagging along for _that_.” 

Booker raises a knowing eyebrow that makes her laugh, and even though it’s silly, he laughs right along with her. They don't stop until their stomachs are aching and Booker is seconds away from throwing up the half a liquor store that he can feel slowly pulling him under. 

They calm down eventually, and when they do, she turns serious, her dark eyes filled with something he’s too tired to puzzle out. “...I didn’t want you to be alone, not for that long. Not for a hundred years. I...I can feel it, you know? The loneliness of knowing the world is moving on around us, but- but we just stay the same And I get it. I’m not saying what you did was right but...I get it. I can only imagine what it was like all those years without anyone around who understands. Anyone to talk to about it. I just...I just want you to know that you have someone now, you know? Someone you can talk to now, when things get rough. It’s what family’s for.” 

The words pour out of her quickly, as if she’s been holding them in for too long- which she probably has- and he nods just the once, even if his heart isn't in it. She doesn’t push it. Instead, she lays her head back down and they stare at the sky until his eyes grow too heavy and he finally lets the darkness pull him under.

And then Sebastien Le Livre dies. 

~~~

When he wakes with a cough that tears through his chest, Nile is gone, and he’s somehow made it back to the cottage. 

He had dreamed of her. 

And yet when he sits up in bed with a groan, he finds his chest tacky with blood. “Ah, _putain!”_

“God damn it!”

Booker snaps to attention. There’s someone else in the house. He moves silently, centuries of practice guiding him as he slips a knife from its place on his side, and makes his way to the kitchen.

Just as he turns out of the doorway, he freezes. _It wasn’t a dream._ It’s Nile bustling around his shitty little kitchen, swearing as the only pan in his house pops her with hot oil. She’s cooking something that smells amazing and struggling to keep the handle from sliding right off the dented skillet, but watching her move in this space, in _his space,_ sets off an ache deep in his chest that won’t go away. No one has cooked for him besides Nicolo or Yusuf in years, not since his Émilie. He’s managed to find companions- all temporary- during his travels, but they never stayed. How could they? So he ate from market vendors, and he ate with the boys, and sometimes he even ate his own food that he tried hard not to burn, but no one else had cooked for Booker in a very long time. 

How something so small could bring such relief is a mystery to him.

“Shit, Booker! You nearly scared me to death!” 

He realizes that he’d been caught staring from the doorway, lost in thought, and hadn’t noticed when Nile turned with two plates in hand and almost dropped them both in surprise. “Apologies, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You’re good, just warn me next time.” She grins and sets the food down on his wobbly table, motioning him to come join her for breakfast.

“It smells good.” He says, plopping down next to her.

“You surprised?” Nile teases.

“Of course not.” He says with a tired smile, and takes a bite of what seems to be a sort of cheesy potato...something. 

It’s delicious. She watches him expectantly and beams when he wolfs it down in minutes. There’s fresh bread she must have bought at the morning market nearby, and it tastes so good he could cry. He could blame it on being hungover, but with his body already fully healed, the excuse is pretty flimsy. However, it does remind him, “Do you know why my favorite shirt is ruined?” 

Nile has the decency to look at least a little bit sheepish when she shrugs and pushes her food around on her plate. “Well, you were taking a little too long to come back, so I-uh...I carried you here. I could tell it was yours by the armory in the living room.” She points with her fork to the low table in the living room covered in weapons. 

He stares in awe. “You _carried me?”_

“I didn’t know what else to do! It’s only been a year, I’m still- you know- figuring this healing stuff out!” She says defensively. 

Booker shakes his head in amusement, trying not to laugh. “You...You carried me...mon dieu...but-ah- the blood?”

“I...may or may not have dropped you on the way back...and I think you died again.” 

He’s shaking with it now he’s laughing so hard and he continues to do so until she finally flings a bite of potato at his head. 

“It was an accident!”

“You killed me and now you owe me a new shirt.” 

They continue to bicker for a while until it settles into something softer, something lighter. They talk about Nile’s travels in the past year, how she’s settling into this life so far. He asks her questions about the food and the people, and she happily answers them if it means they can both continue to tiptoe around the questions he struggles not to ask. _How are they? Is Andy okay? Do you know where she is?_

Finally, they finish eating, and Booker insists on cleaning up since Nile had done the cooking. And then it’s time for her to go. She had come to check in on him, make sure he wasn’t living in a cave somewhere. He helps her pack and they talk some more while he walks her to the car she had rented to get there from the airport. 

It’s a long walk, but it still passes too quickly. He wants to ask her to stay, but he knows he can’t. Knows it wouldn’t be right after only a year to break his punishment in such a way. As if she can sense it, Nile turns after her bags are finally thrown into the backseat, and pulls him into a hug tight enough to hurt. It hurts more when she lets go though, and the look on her face says she knows it. 

“Goodbye, Booker.” Nile whispers. “We’ll see each other soon.”

He can only nod and watch as she gets in the car and drives away. He stays there, watching the road long after she’s gone, and tries not to think about how far away soon feels. 

~~~

They continue on in this way for a few years, perhaps just a little over a decade, and it’s an uncomfortable cycle. Nile finds him wherever he is at least once a year and makes him stop dying from choking on his own vomit long enough to eat something. 

Booker hates it. Hates how she refuses to give up on him. Hates how she has to see him at his worst, and know that it’s the only way he knows how to be. He knows it isn’t her responsibility to make him better. It isn’t just for him to keep asking this of her, even if he’s asking without words.

And so he tries. 

When she finds him next, he’s in Greece. He’s living in a small city apartment that he keeps clean enough, even if he still has bad days where he can’t get out of bed to eat or shower. 

Those days are the ones where all he can think of is Andy getting shot and the feeling of knowing it was his fault. The memory of Nicolo and Yusuf realizing that he’d betrayed the only people who had ever cared about him after his family’s death. The nightmares that leave him choking on tears. 

But he makes it through for the most part. He’s tired, but he tries. He reads more and he takes care of the plants that line his balcony and he helps people with his abilities when he can. 

She finds him like that, his eyes still heavy, but his smile coming just a little bit easier.

“You cooked?” Nile calls to him from across the living room as she slings her duffle bag onto the couch. She always tries to insist on sleeping on the couch when she visits, and Booker always refuses, and by the time they’re both ready for bed, he’ll already have claimed the couch with a smug look on his face, but for now he pretends to let it go. 

“You know I didn’t.” He smiles and brings her a plate to carry out onto the balcony with him. She follows behind and he leads her to a comfortable bench without a table, leaving them both to balance their food on their laps. “There is an old woman downstairs who raises her two grandchildren. She brings me food every now and then because she says I don’t eat enough.” 

“She’s right.” Nile teases before taking a bite out of the stuffed grape leaves.

“You like it?”

“It’s _really_ good.” She says.

“I’m glad…” They both fall silent, but it’s the comfortable kind of quiet, the kind that leaves you breathing just a little bit easier afterwards- at least for Booker anyways. 

The air is warm and smells like the lemon trees growing in the courtyard below, and the sound of people laughing and singing from somewhere nearby drifts over them as beautiful as any song. They stay like this for a while, just being together, before Nile slips her hand in his and gives it a small reassuring squeeze. “It’s good to see you like this.”

“It’s good to see you at all.” Booker admits. “It’s...more than I deserve.”

She shakes her head and looks at him with such a mixture of hope and concern that it could almost stop his heart. There’s something else there. Something he pretends not to notice. It’s in the way those dark eyes follow his hands, his lips, the way she watches him when she thinks he won’t notice. It steals the air from his lungs and sets his skin burning with the want to ask her to stay. Even just an hour longer, a minute, a second. 

When she leaves the next morning, it’s with a wrapped plate of pastries he’d saved for her, and a kiss on the cheek he tries not to think too much about. 

And so he goes on like this, trying new recipes that almost never work, forcing himself to talk to his neighbors and the people at the market without scaring them away. Ten years pass without notice and it’s almost time for him to say goodbye until he can return in time without raising suspicion about his age. 

It's on the last day that he sees her. 

He almost didn’t recognize her with her silver hair elegantly pulled back into a twist. She’s with a woman close in age- though really just in body- who must be her wife, and they’re looking at the trinkets that fill one of the many marketplace stalls. But he hears her voice cut through the crowd and he would recognize it anywhere. He hears it every night in his dreams. 

Andromache. 

As if even thinking her name summoned her, she turns and their eyes meet for the first time in over twenty years. 

He can’t breathe. His lungs refuse to take in air and his hands shake badly enough that he loses his grip on his groceries. She’s aged. His Andy had aged and he’d missed it all. She was married and he wasn’t there. She could have children, grandchildren even, and he never met a single one. Her face mirrors the sorrow on his, but he knows it in his bones that if he tried to approach her, she’d turn away from him if only to be just. The woman who saved him, who gave him a home, who took away his loneliness if even for just a while. The woman he would have let die for his own selfish self-loathing. They’re close enough to reach out and touch but further away than they’ve ever been before. The last time he felt a pain of this measure, it was when his own son turned him away from his deathbed. This loss is unbearable. 

And then Andy takes her wife’s hand and leaves without looking back. 

It hits him then, even harder than when his sentence was placed, that she will die one day without him. That this is his fault, this is what he’s earned.

Booker leaves Greece that night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Booker gets a little lost and someone brings him back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: most, if not all the heavy triggers tagged are relevant to this chapter and im gonna apologize now but remember!! it's gonna be okay!!
> 
> also, please ignore any slip ups in the timeline, im GAY and BAD AT MATH, okay?????
> 
> ((Please keep in mind that I am a victim of PTSD, and while I understand that everyone experiences trauma differently, I based a good portion of Booker's PTSD symptoms off my own. However, I have no experience with eating disorders and the starvation described here was accelerated due to time and his healing abilities- meaning I researched what I could and tried to guess how his powers would work around that. If anyone is offended by the portrayal, please reach out to me and I will try my absolute best to fix it. Thank you for your understanding))

It’s the first year since their little tradition started that she can’t find Booker. 

Nile tries reminding herself that they have to keep under the radar, that it makes sense he’s hard to find. 

But all she can picture is him dying for good, all alone when his body finally stops getting up again. 

Another year passes. And another. 

Booker makes sure to keep moving that first year before finally going to Germany. In the beginning, he leaves only for alcohol and food, and even then, only when he must. After a while though, he just pays someone to bring him his things once a week, and after that, he’s gone. 

He isn’t dead for good, not just yet, but he might as well be. He sleeps on the floor in the living room, even though the wood is rotting through in places, and doesn’t notice the cold moving in when he stops paying the heat bill. 

Booker only sleeps, and when he sleeps, it’s almost always the same. Blood on his hands. Empty graves. His family and friends running from him, always too far to reach. When he’s awake, he drinks. He drinks until the world goes dark and quiet. He drinks until he can feel the death he deserves, and then he wakes and starts again. He doesn’t shower, doesn’t speak, and only eats when the pain becomes too much. 

But Nile doesn’t stop looking. She’s a marine, and she tells herself that this is what she was trained for. Though after a while, the leads dry up, and it all comes down to asking the only people in the world who have the right to say no. 

“He’s okay, Nile. Sometimes we disappear for a few years but-” Nicolo turns to his partner with a small smile, “-we always find our way back to each other.” 

“And you shouldn’t be wasting time looking for the bastard anyways.” Yusuf insists loudly, startling a few of the other guests, as well as the waitress who had been coming to take their drink orders. 

“But...” Nile has to pause and try again. “But what if he can’t find his way back alone?”

She’s suddenly afraid to look up, afraid of what these two men who’ve been alive for so long will see on her face if she does, but Nicolo only sighs with pity. 

“Germany.” Yusuf offers up reluctantly. “He’ll be in Germany.”

“Germany? You’re sure?” She asks. 

“When his son died, it was- bad. Sebastien, he has always felt sadness deeper than any man should be expected, but that...that took something from him. Something he never quite found again. His wife- she had always wanted to see Germany. He built the house there in her memory.” Nicolo pauses and looks to Yusuf as if worried he’ll say the wrong thing. “When his son died, he hid himself from us for a long time. It was Andy who found him and brought him home.”

“The way he looked when he returned to us...even a traitor doesn’t deserve such a fate.” Yusuf tries to appear indifferent, but it’s clear he still cares deeply. 

“We can give you coordinates to find him, but if you do...tell him we miss him, sì? We both do.”

~~~

There’s no other word for it. Booker is _feral._

When she finds the house, Nile hopes that no one's there. That Yusuf was wrong. The windows are broken in places, missing in others, and the roof looks a second away from collapsing. She picks the lock easily enough and only takes a few steps into the dark house when she nearly trips right over him. 

Her first thought is that he’s dead, and her chest begins to tighten, but then he moves just a little and she’s able to breathe again. Nile quickly crouches down and nudges him onto his back. 

And gags. 

It’s clear he hasn’t bathed recently, if there’s even running water in this place, and his soft, golden hair is matted in places. 

She touches it mournfully and thinks back to when he had let her put in little braids during one of her visits. She’d teased him the whole time about it being a sleepover, and he pretended to be annoyed, but they both knew he hadn’t really minded. And now it’s ruined.

There’s vomit on his shirt, and blood, and his pants are far too thin for how cold it is outside. And God, he’s so _thin,_ he looks like his bones are going to poke right through his skin. Nile finally has to sit down all the way to prop his head onto her lap. “Booker... _Sebastien_ …”

He doesn’t seem to hear her. It’s like he’s a ghost, his eyes seeing passed her, barely blinking. And then he does die again, right there in her arms. At first she thinks he must have drank himself to death again, but then she realizes- 

He let himself starve. 

It’s then that panic takes over, that the sobbing won’t stop, and it hurts too much to breathe. She lets his head fall too hard against the floor in her desperate rush to get up, but it isn’t as important as trying to fix this. 

Nile scavenges through bare, broken cupboards until she finds a can of generic tomato soup long forgotten on a bottom shelf. She almost cuts herself in her hurry to pull the tab off and her movements are shaky as she rushes back to his side to wait. 

It doesn’t take long, though she almost wishes it had if it meant avoiding the horrible animal noise that he makes as he wakes up. Still, he says nothing. Only sucks in sharp, hard breaths and stares at something too far away to see. But he’s too weak to fight her as she spoons a few small bites down his throat. Not too much, not at first, or else it’ll all just come up again. Eventually though, the can is empty and he’s asleep. 

Nile is exhausted. She falls asleep right there beside him and doesn’t wake up again until a loud knocking comes from the other side of the door. 

On instinct, her hand goes to the gun at her side, but it doesn’t feel very reassuring when she notices that her movements are still a bit more sluggish than she’d like them to be. Still, she forces her sore body off the ground and towards whatever’s waiting outside. 

A flurry of quick German greets her when she opens the door, and it only pauses for a moment when the teenager waiting outside with arms full of bags notices she isn’t who he was expecting. But without waiting for an explanation, he unceremoniously pushes the brown bags into her arms and takes off at top speed. 

It seems Booker has earned himself a reputation. 

Nile debates calling after him when she realizes there would be no point. Instead, she brings the mysterious bags inside and sets them on the ground to dig through them. It only takes her a second to realize it’s mostly cheap liquor, which she takes the time to pour down the rusty kitchen sink before moving on. What little food they delivered is made up mostly of non-perishables like the soup from before and a unknown meat that she immediately drops back into the bag. 

_Fuck._

It takes a few calls, but before long, she has real supplies on the way and decides it’s time to get to work. 

It takes a whole day before she sees any real progress. There’s no dishes to clean because he doesn’t own any. Clothes can’t be washed yet, because the house had been built without a washer/dryer hookup in mind- go figure. But an electrician is scheduled to arrive the next day and although it would be crazy to try and fix the entire house, she does ask around about someone to fix the windows to keep some of the cold out, and it only takes a little over an hour to get the lights turned back on. 

The entire time she works, she worries. She checks on Booker every half an hour, and forces him to painstakingly eat another can of soup, which he tries to push away, though he eventually gives in and lets her. Someone arrives before nightfall with real groceries and an arm full of clean blankets, plus an oversized sweater that someone had tossed in that she immediately pulls on over his clothes. He’s still dirty, but at least he’ll be warmer. 

It’s a miracle she lasts as long as she does before crashing.

Eventually, her body can’t take any more, and she’s forced to actually get some sleep for the night, but still, she stays with him. Nile curled up beside him on the ground, silently praying for the both of them. 

~~~

Weeks fly by. 

Nile quickly gives up on trying to save his hair, and decides to just shave it off. It isn’t easy, he still hardly hears her, but he seems to know when she needs him to move, and he sits patiently as it all falls away. He takes baths now, though it’s clearly hard for him, and he eats whatever she sets in front of him. But through it all, he never says a word.

The nightmares are bad. 

She starts making him sleep in a real bed, and since the house only has a single bedroom, she ends up with the couch, which she expects him to fight her on. He doesn’t say a word though, only accepts the blankets she brings him and rolls over to face the wall. 

The first night she manages to get him to his room, Nile wakes to screaming. A desperate, hoarse scream that claws its way out of his throat, and sends her heart racing painfully in her chest. It’s something she’s seen before in vets- the nightmares that won’t stop coming, that feel too real because they’re things that have already happened. And it hurts because she knows there’s nothing she can do about it. 

Only once in those first few weeks does she try to wake him up, and it ends with a knife in her stomach after Booker confuses her for someone who isn’t really there. 

But the hardest part is the withdrawals. After the first day, Nile makes sure there isn’t any alcohol in the house, and he spends a long time afterwards shaking and throwing up what little he can hold down. It’s not hard to tell this is the first time in centuries Booker’s gone this long without drinking, but she reminds herself it’s for the best. Even when he tears the house apart trying to find something- anything.

Finally, it’s too much. It’s too hard to watch him every day, seeing him go through the motions of living as if he’s already gone. She realizes then that she’ll have to leave eventually, no matter how long she avoids it. 

But for now she stays and tries her best, even when it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. Like on nights like tonight, when the dreams sound worse than usual. Even after all this time, Nile still checks on him when the screams get too bad- and tonight they just won’t _stop._

She pads away from the couch, barefoot and shivering from the cold night air that hits any skin she’s left uncovered, and carefully opens the door. It takes a second for her eyes to adjust, the only light in the room coming from outside the window, but when she can see again, her eyes go right to the shaking figure taking up most of the room on the small bed. Nile gives it a minute or two, but once it’s clear he’s not going to get any real rest tonight, and nothing else she’s tried has seemed to work, she gives in and does what she’s wanted to do from the very beginning;

She holds him.

Booker tries to push away at first, he’s gained back some of his strength as he started eating again and could easily fight it if he really wanted to. But instead, the screaming stops, and is replaced by quiet sobs and hands that reach down to keep her arms in place. She knows he’s awake now, but neither of them say anything, not that she expected him to anyways. 

And then she gets it. The whole time she was trying to help, he couldn’t see it. Booker became so used to barely being able to take care of himself that it didn’t mean anything if someone else was there to watch him do it. He stopped caring. But _feeling_ someone care about you? Sometimes it’s the only way to stop feeling so alone. 

They fall asleep like that, Nile spooning Booker from behind, the rising and falling of their chests as even as they’ve been in what feels like a lifetime.

Neither of them dream. 

~~~

When Nile wakes the next day, she can feel the eyes on her. 

“Why are you still here?” Booker whispers, his voice low and scratchy from disuse. It’s so good to hear his voice, to see his dark green eyes looking alert for the first time in months, that it’s hard to answer at first. It doesn’t help that the world is still soft and warm from sleep, but looking at him now, she’s reminded of the last time they were laying beside each other. When the French sky above them had looked endless and things weren’t as complicated as they are now. 

“Because I told you once that you shouldn’t be alone, remember?” Nile whispers back. She can tell by his face that it isn’t the answer he was expecting. 

“But...But it’s a punishment I _earned._ ” He says it like he’s begging her to understand, as if she doesn’t already know the full weight of what he did. 

“...You were punishing yourself long before any of this happened, Sebastien.”

At first she’s sure he fell back asleep. His eyes are closed and his breathing is steady, but just as she decides to try and get a few more hours herself, she almost misses the quiet, “ _I’m sorry.”_

Nile pauses before replying. _“I know.”_

And then he’s resting his forehead against hers and they really do fall back asleep this time.

When she wakes up the second time, the sun is coming in high through the window, and the space beside her is empty. 

_I might not be able to find him this time._

It’s fear that has her sprinting from the bed towards where they keep their shoes, one arm already in her jacket by the time she notices the movement in the kitchen. She freezes and turns slowly only to need a second for her brain to catch up with the scene that awaits her. 

It’s Booker. He’s sitting at their ancient dining table sporting clean clothes and damp hair. He’s been growing it out again since they had to shave it off and the soft, golden fuzz coming in is actually pretty cute if she’s being honest. There’s breakfast waiting on the table that looks like it consists of pretty badly burnt buttered toast, mixed fruit, and store bought orange juice, and it’s been put out on the real plates she bought recently instead of the paper ones they still have a ton of from the first week she moved in. 

“You cooked?” Nile asks cautiously while taking the seat beside him.

He doesn’t speak, pretending to be absorbed in his food, but he does make a noise in confirmation. It’s not what you would call conversation, but it’s more than they’ve had in...awhile. So she tells him stories instead. Just little things, like they did before. She tells him about feeding monkeys in Taiwan, about growing up with her brother, about how Nicolo and Yusuf ended their honeymoon early to break up a human trafficking ring on the West Coast. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner but...they said to tell you they miss you, you know, once I found you and everything.”

He studiously avoids looking her in the eye. “...Even Yusuf?”

“Even Yusuf.”

And even though it’s gone too soon for her to be sure, Nile could swear she sees him smile.

~~~

Things change after that. 

For starters; The couch.

Nile tries to go back to sleeping on the couch after a week, if only not to fuck up what little progress she’s made with Booker so far, but almost as soon as she’s laid down, two arms are lifting her back up and carrying her back into the room.

“What are you _doing?”_ She shrieks. “Put me down!”

“Oh, So it’s only okay for _you_ to carry _me_ then, ah?” There it is again, that almost-not-there-smile. It would be worth it if only she didn’t want to stab him at the moment. 

He tosses her unceremoniously on the bed and turns to leave, which leaves her scrambling to sit up. “Hold up...you’re giving me the bed?” 

Booker struggles to speak, still getting used to talking again, but after a while it’s clear whatever he really wants to say isn’t going to come, and he can only sigh. “You shouldn’t be sleeping on the couch.”

And with that, he leaves.

It lasts for all of an hour, Nile trying her best to get comfortable, and Booker knowing that if he falls asleep the dreams will still be waiting. As soon as she realizes it isn’t going to work, she gives up and marches back into the living room with an extra blanket tucked under her arm. “Move over.”

“You realize this is a couch, don’t you? There’s nowhere to move.” Booker whisper-shouts indignantly. 

“Fine.” Nile studies the sleeping situation for a minute, decides there’s only one thing left to do, and gives no warning before laying right on top of him. 

“ _Dieu!”_ He huffs, trying to adjust. It draws out a muffled laugh from where her face is smushed against his chest, and she can tell he doesn’t mind by the way he carefully tucks the blankets around both of them. Once they’re both settled, Booker tries his best to recreate their same positions from before, only now reversed; with his arms hesitantly drawing her against his chest and his head resting against the top of Nile’s. 

There’s still a lot to change, things they’ll have to work on in the upcoming weeks- even years- but for now there’s a _rightness,_ a feeling of coming home that neither of them thought they’d ever feel again, and it sinks through their skin all the way down to their bones until at last there’s nothing left to do but fall asleep, and know that there’s someone waiting for them when the morning comes. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Booker gets a much needed break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is 100% domestic fluff filler and I dont feel even a little bit bad about it
> 
> sorry it's so short, but i'm trying to update regularly now!!!!!

“I think we should paint the house.” 

Booker looks up from the book he’s reading to find Nile standing in front of him, arms crossed, and that determined spark she gets in her eyes when she’s ready to make something happen one way or the other. 

The last time she got like this, he got shot in Libya. “Okay.”

She stares at him in surprise, mouth opening and closes a few times in surprise before she finally blurts out, “Really? Just like that?”

“Sure.” He shrugs. 

“Can I pick the color?”

“No.”

~~~

They have to put it off for a while, it’s just too wet to work outside with the snow that keeps on coming, but they get lucky at the tail-end of March, and there’s an entire week of dry weather. 

“Damn, we’re good.” Nile says while stepping back to inspect their work.

The house had been built around 1845 after his wife died, and it hadn’t been renovated since the late 1940’s when Yusuf made him add wiring. The garden out back is still badly neglected, and the low fence around the yard is missing in places. 

But now the stones that make up half the structure are clean and the wood is painted a soft, buttery yellow color Nile picked out which stands in stark contrast to the still grey winter sky around them.

“Oui...Émilie...she would have liked it very much.” He agrees quietly, taking it all in. His wife would never have liked it before, it felt like too much of a goodbye, but now that it’s getting a second chance- it’s what she would want for him. To turn a place of such sadness into a home. He clears his throat and looks to the woman at his side. “I think she would have liked you as well.”

Nile’s smile is soft when she moves to take his arm, and they stand in silence- the comfortable kind- while their breath forms clouds between them. 

~~~

One morning, Booker wakes up while the sky is still the cool blue that comes right before the sun remembers to rise. Taking care not to wake Nile, he climbs over her, and makes his way to the garden. 

The badly overgrown one.

The same garden that’s just a few years shy of becoming an extension of the woods that surround the property. 

Weeds have choked out anything that might have been living there before, and the soil has turned hard and rocky, but with Nile’s determined eyes still fresh in mind, he rolls up his sleeves and starts tearing it up. He finds tools in a shed that have escaped the damage of time and pulls the weeds out by their roots, grabs whatever rocks are small enough to escape the tools with bare hands, and turns the dirt over and over again until it begins to soften. 

Hours pass like this, and his shirt is plastered to his chest with sweat, but he doesn’t stop. It’s methodical work. The muscles in his shoulders bunching as his arms raise up and slam down again and again, over and over, forcing the earth to change beneath his hands. He’s so focused, he jumps when Nile taps him to get his attention. 

“Sorry! I’m sorry, I just- are you good?” Nile looks around at the piles of dead grass and turned earth surrounding them. He can only imagine what she’s thinking right now; every inch of him covered in dirt and sweat, his chest heaving while he struggles to take in deep, hard breaths. “How long have you been out here, Booker?”

“I’m...not sure, what time is it now?” He asks while raking his hand through his sweat-drenched hair. 

“Close to dinner time. I thought you’d come in to eat eventually but…” She trails off. 

“You were worried.”

“I was worried.” She admits while walking around to investigate his work. “I wouldn’t have guessed it, but gardening- It’s a good look for you.”

He laughs while turning his attention back to tilling. “For a while, I used to always have plants around. I- ah- I like the work it brings...and watching their progress, you know?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t keep a plant alive to save my life! But my mom- man, my mom used to love to garden. I could see how proud she was of it, how happy it made her.” She blinks away the memory and returns to his side. “I’m glad you decided to save it- the garden, I mean.”

“I decided it was worth saving.” Booker gives her a sideways look. Suddenly, another thought comes to mind. “Isn’t it your birthday soon?”

“Wow...I hadn’t really thought about it, but yeah, you’re right. The fifteenth, I’ll be...I’ll be fifty-two.” She lets out a low breath. “I used to think that was so old...I thought I’d have more to show for it by now.”

“Don’t worry, I’m almost two hundred and seventy-six and the best thing i’ve done in years is paint a house.” 

“And you’re planting a garden, can’t forget that.” She’s quick to add. 

“And i’m planting a garden, you’re right.” He laughs quietly. “But that’s the thing about time, Nile. The more you have of it, the more you think you can waste. Trust me...I’ve wasted more years than some men get in a lifetime. I’m learning now though, I think…”

“Learning what?” She prompts after he takes too long to continue. 

“How to use the moments I’m given. When I can, of course.” He’s quick to tack on the last part, knowing even now that there will always be bad days waiting for him. 

“I’ve known you for almost three decades and you’ve never said anything even _remotely_ as helpful as that.” Nile knocks her arm against his with a teasing grin. 

“I know, I’m a little surprised myself.” 

They laugh and stay there talking for just a little while longer before he allows himself to be dragged indoors to shower and eat, but he thinks about it again, just before falling asleep; 

Maybe deciding something should be saved is a moment all on its own.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One step forward, three steps back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i KNOW i haven't updated in forever, I'm so sorry guys but college classes started sooooo it be like that sometimes~

For the first time in his very long life, Booker becomes a morning person. 

Well...not without some effort. 

He gets an alarm clock and uses it, even when he wants to smash it to pieces. Then he goes into the kitchen to make the world’s shittiest coffee _‘coffee should not be that thick, man’_ that Nile usually drinks with him out of solidarity. And then it’s back to the garden. 

The work is exhausting, but the days go by just a little bit easier now, and it feels a little like progress.

One morning, as he’s padding into the kitchen barefoot with eyes still crusted with sleep and thin, grey sweatpants slung low around his hips, he looks up just in time to shoulder right into the side of their refrigerator. “ _Jesus,_ Nile!”

“Fuck!” The room is still dark, only just now turning the pale blue of pre-dawn with a single dim light on above the oven, and Nile is barely visible from where she’s leaning against the kitchen counter- just visible enough to scare him fully awake. 

“What. Are you doing.” He asks. “How long have you been _awake?” ___

__She tries to subtly slide her phone away, but the headphone cord catches around her hand and pulls it out of the jack;_ _

_“Merci. Merci beaucoup. Fille. Garçon-”_

__Nile swears and fumbles with the phone, tapping the screen repeatedly with maybe more force than necessary before it finally pauses, and the two of them are left in deafening silence. It takes a second for his half-asleep brain to catch up but-_ _

__She’s learning French. At 6 am._ _

Booker opens his mouth to speak but quickly decides against it seeing as he prefers to die _after_ he’s had breakfast. Instead, he makes a break for the pantry shelves across the room. At least deciding on a poptart flavor will buy him a few more seconds without eye contact. 

__He clears his throat, and with his back still turned, he calls over his shoulder, “You...You could keep going, you know.”_ _

“Do not _start_ with me, Booker.” She points a finger at him. 

__“C’mon, I won’t say anything!” He turns around to toss her a strawberry poptart- he knows she hates the blueberry kind- and crosses his heart with his own silver package. “Not a word.”_ _

__“...Not. A. Word.”_ _

__He silently mouths it again for emphasis, which makes her smile, though she tries to hide it. But she’s giving in, which is what really matters. So while Booker takes a seat facing away to give her some privacy, Nile restarts the video._ _

_“À tout à l’heure. Bon appétit. Pomme. Orange-”_ Her voice is quiet even for the silence of early morning around them- and a bit nervous, despite the easy way she follows the vocabulary. 

In the end though, it’s the fruit that gets to him. He tries to hide it by burying his face in his hand, but she notices the movement out of the corner of her eye and swats at his arm. 

“You don’t have to be an ass, Booker.” Nile says, clearly offended. She turns away, but not before he catches the look of genuine hurt that flashes across her face. 

“No, no, you’re doing very well! It’s just-” Booker nearly knocks over the chair in his hurry to stand. “It’s just the accent you’re using; _or-ah-nge._ ” 

__

__

__“...And?”_ _

“ _And_ the girl you’re watching is parisian. You can tell by the way she says it; _or-o-nge._ ” He explains, trying to get the pronunciation as close as he can. 

__She rolls her eyes. “You know, you could just tell me I was saying it wrong.”_ _

“But you _weren’t_ saying it wrong. You were just- pronouncing it like a southerner would.” When he smiles, it’s soft and pleased. “You were pronouncing it like I do.” 

__“Well, some girl I've never met isn’t the one who ate an entire bag of mini oranges during movie night two weeks ago.” Nile’s smile in return is guarded, but there’s a teasing glimmer back in her eyes. “I’ve never seen someone ready to spout poetry about fruit.”_ _

__“It was a small bag!”_ _

__“Mhm.”_ _

__He huffs, but it doesn’t stop the heat that spreads like sunlight through his chest; warm and content, except for, “...Why didn’t you just ask me?”_ _

“I don’t know. Maybe... I was a little embarrassed.” She admits with a shrug. “We’ve known each other for 26 years now, and I just- never got around to learning it. Nicolo taught me Italian years ago and Yusuf says I’ve almost got Arabic down, but...so much time has _already_ passed and-” 

“Listen to me, _ma boneur._ All that matters is that you want to learn now.” Booker reaches for her hand without thinking but catches himself at the last second, gently taking her wrist instead. “Let me help you with this.” 

__Nile turns her hand around to thread their fingers together, refusing to look away as if daring him to say something. “...If I ask for your help, you can’t laugh, okay?”_ _

__It takes every ounce of self control he has not to look down, but now it’s all he can focus on. How their hands fit together- not like in the old romance novels Yusuf denies keeping around, where touch between the characters is always soft and perfect- but in the way their war-calloused hands match each other in the stories they tell. And in the way they both hold on like they’re afraid to let ago._ _

__They’ve held hands before, but briefly, and out of necessity more than anything. Now Nile grips his hand like it’s a declaration._ _

__“Okay.”_ _

__Nile opens her mouth to say something else but she’s stopped by a loud knock on the door._ _

__It’s too late at night to be a neighbor- though it’s possible there could have been an emergency at the Bauer’s farm down the road- either way, neither of them are willing to leave it to chance. Quickly and quietly, experience kicks in, and within seconds Nile has slipped out the back door to circle around while Booker moves to see who it is._ _

__He keeps a steady hand on his gun, and waits until the knock comes a second time before throwing the door open, weapon ready._ _

__“It’s good to see you again, Mr. Booker.” Standing in the doorway and illuminated by dim yellow porch light, is ex-CIA Agent Copley himself. “And I see Ms. Freeman is still with you, which is good. It’s why I came, actually. You can put the gun down now, ma’am, if it’s alright with you.”_ _

__Nile slowly lowers the 9mm semi-automatic pistol she holds just inches away from the back of his head. “It’s been a few years.”_ _

__“That it has.” He says. “May we all step inside?”_ _

__Booker shares a look with Nile who nods her head in assent before he leads the way into the living room, flipping on lights as he goes while finding a seat on the couch. Copley gestures to the chair on the other side of the coffee table and waits for a nod in permission before settling down. “I’m sorry if I woke you. I would have waited a few more hours, but...I thought it would be best if I came as soon as my plane landed.”_ _

__“We’d offer you a drink but all we have is tap water and milk.” Nile says, completely unabashed. She drifts closer to Booker and leans against the arm of the couch._ _

__“I’m fine, though I appreciate the offer-”_ _

__“Why are you here, Copley?” Booker cuts him off impatiently._ _

He clears his throat and nods, years of CIA training still obvious in the way he straightens himself and tries to keep his face carefully neutral. “Ah, right to the point then...Mrs. Freeman- Nile. I’m so sorry but it’s your mother. 

She passed away a few days ago.” 


End file.
